Jean De Waurin and His Perception of the Turks in Anatolia in the Late Middle Ages

International Journal of Business and Social Science Vol. 4 No. 16; December 2013 Medieval Perspectives: Jean de Waurin and His Perception of the Turks in Anatolia in the Late Middle Ages T. Tolga Gumus (Asist. Prof.) Mersin University Faculty of Science and Humanities Department of History Çiftlikköy Kampüsü Mersin/Turkey Abstract This article investigates Jean de Waurin’s perception of the Turks in his account of the expedition in Anatolia in fifteenth century. The first part gives a brief account of Jean de Waurin. The second part analyses in detail his perception of the Turks, his expedition to Anatolia and his reasons for writing his account of the crusade of Varna. Then, Waurin’s perspective about the Turks is compared with various views of some other sixteenth century accounts. By doing so, the differences and similarities of the European perception of the Turks of the two centuries in question are discussed. It is argued that Waurin saw the Turks firstly as an enemy and then as ‘the enemy of the Christian faith’. This study also discusses why Waurin wrote this account. The reason was that this account was a crusading propaganda. What Waurin was making in his expedition was clearly a ‘crusade’ and accordingly religious tone in his account is something to be noted. Key Words: Jean de Wavrin, Turks, Crusade of Varna, Humanist Crusading Propaganda, Walerin de Wavrin, European Perception of the Turks. 1. Introduction This paper discusses the reasons Wavrin wrote his account of the crusade of Varna and Walerin de Wavrin’s expedition into the Balkans, which was later published within his history of Britain and how he perceived and accordingly presented the Turks to the renaissance readers. His primary aim in writing his history was probably to demonstrate that the Duke of Burgundy was a key figure in helping the Christians in their quest of crusade and the Burgundian forces were very effective and useful in the service of Christianity. This Burgundian interest of military expedition against the Ottomans was by no means new as it went down to the time of Philip’s father John the fearless(Chasin, 1989, p. 289). Wavrin occasionally denigrated the foe, the Turks probably for raising interest in the reader. In this respect the work is a typical humanist crusading propaganda in its narration of the events between the Christians and the Turks. Then Waurin’s perception of the Turks is alaborated by referring to some examples in his chronicle. Lastly, the historical signifcance of his work is discussed. 2. Waurin and his Account of Varna Jean de Waurin [Wavrin] Seigneur de Forestel, (b. 1399/1400, d. in or after 1473/4) served as ambassador and counselor for Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy (d. 1467). His political career was far more remarkable than his military career as after ending his military career in 1436, Duke Philip. He was actively enrolled in the crusading campaign against the Turks as he was accordingly sent to the pope Pius II to discuss the matter in 1463 (Visser Fuchs, 2004-2005). Waurin’s practice of writing collections of the chronicles of history goes back to mid-1440s as his original aim as a pro-English member of the Burgundian court was to write a full-length history of England after his nephew Waleran de Waurin’s proposal. His initial plan was accordingly to write a history of England from the arrival of Albina to the accession of Henry V in 1413. However he decided to continue and added further material the last two volumes of Hardy’s publication, extending his work up to 1471 to Edward’s return to the throne. He also added another section in which he narrated his nephew Valerin’s expedition of Varna against the Ottoman Turks. 163 © Center for Promoting Ideas, USA www.ijbssnet.com One possible reason for this decision may be that he was perhaps affected by the new discourse of this newly flourishing crusading literature of renaissance humanism. Therefore one major aspect of the motives behind his history writing was to help his court’s political aims by manipulating the past in accordance with the political conditions of his time. Whenever he was close to England he wrote an English history, and whenever he was a proponent of the crusade he wrote a history related to the crusades against the Turks. A practice of manipulating the past for the contemporary political needs which originally goes back to even Venerable Bede’s time. Before elaborating the significance of Waurin’s original contribution, it is worth discussing the development of the complete work in a little bit more detail. Historians were well aware of the fact that most, if not all, of Waurin’s account was by no means original as the title of the work already suggested, (Recueil meaning ‘collection’) but greatly based on various other chronicles sometimes as verbatim copies. He first extensively used the Brut, a verse chronicle of the legendary history of England for the earlier part of his work and for his history of England to the beginning of the fourteenth century. He then based his account mainly on Jean Froissart’s Chroniques, which covers the history of Western Europe from the early fourteenth century to 1400, roughly the first half of the Hundred Years Wars. Waurin completed these four volumes by 1455. The work so far covered the events from Albina, the legendary founder of Albion, to the death of Henry V in 1422. Then, for 1400 to 1443, he furthermore relied either on Enguerran de Monstrelet’s Chronique, which merely reflects the Burgundian view of the events between 1400-44 or on a common source. The date of publication of this last volume is however significant. He wrote this volume after 1461 where the humanist crusading literature against the Turks boosted probably due to the fact that Constantinople fell on the Turks and John Hunyads was no more a secure buffer zone for preventing the Western Europe from the Turkish threat. For his last volume, he sometimes drew on the Arrival of Edward IV, [an apparent Tudor propaganda strongly favoring the house of Lancaster and copied almost verbatim its opposing counterpart, the Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lincolnshire essentially a Yorkist propaganda claiming that the Duke of Clarence and Earl of Warwick conspired against Edward (Matheson, 1988 p. 22; Thomson, 1971, pp. 84-93; Holland, 1988, p 851). However, he also added his own observations and oral information he gathered. For instance Waurin possibly profited from the information he received from Antony Woodville the brother of Elizabeth Woodville, the Queen of England, whose connections may have been established in 1467 in a tournament in England (Marchandisse, 2006, pp. 507-27). Accordingly, this last volume is perhaps the only part of his work which possesses substantial valuable original material which may also shed some light on the Ottoman Serbian affairs between 1442 and 1443 so far unattested. Therefore, it deserves special attention. Fifteenth century also witnessed the rise of the propaganda histories. Polydore Vergil was simply a Tudor propaganda, another chronicle the Arrival, was a Yorkist propaganda, Lincolnshire rebellion was again a Yorkist propaganda and there are other propaganda works. Similarly this work of Waurin is almost the same. It is in priority a Burgundian propaganda narrating the duke Philip’s impact on the crusades against the Turks (Waurin, 1864 Chapter 6). At least the last volume of Waurin’s work is an example of the new current of the history writing of the fifteenth century Burgundian court. Devaux argued that the history writing in Europe was dominated by the Burgundians by the second half of the fifteenth century especially by the particular efforts of Philip the Good (Devaux, 2006, p. 467-76). Waurin possibly wanted to convince his readers that the events he narrated actually happened. His work is a good example of the typical Burgundian history writing genre “orientée tout entière vers l’actualité”, (Devaux, 2006, p. 473) representing an instance of a new form of historiography “fondée sur l’expérience personnelle du narrateur” (Devaux, 2006, p. 473). It is in prose form as verse forms were perceived largely fictional, the actuality of the text appeared warranted by the usage of the prose form (Devaux, 2006, p. 469). L’une des grandes spécificités de cette production historiographique tient toutefois à l’essor d’une école de chroniqueurs orientée tout entière vers l’actualité. L’on voit éclore, par ailleurs, avec le genre des mémoires, une forme nouvelle d’historiographie, fondée sur l’expérience personnelle du narrateur (Devaux, 2006, p. 473). le narcissisme chevaleresque constitutif de l’identité bourguignonne (Devaux, 2006, p. 475). Plus que jamais, l’histoire s’impose, au XVe siècle, comme un instrument de légitimation, ainsi qu’en témoigne la querelle de succession qui se fit jour au lendemain de la mort du Téméraire (Devaux, 2006, p. 472). 164 International Journal of Business and Social Science Vol. 4 No. 16; December 2013 The chronicle is a blend of fact and fiction but a very skilful one. As one historian has already noted for the Burgundian historians of the period in general: “The Burgundian princes had for some years seen the value of investing in historiographers who, with Tacitean sophistication, put across the Burgundian view of events in a disarmingly frank manner.” (Holland, 1988, p. 868). One other aspect of Waurin’s importance lies in the fact Waurin was one of a few lay Western Europeans who wrote a history of the Ottoman Turks and his narration was accordingly relatively less bereft from the ethical and theological implications of the Christian views of the time.

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